


Nascita di Venere

by kmo



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Bath Sex, F/M, Hair Kink, Oral Sex, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Vaginal Sex, mischa feels, secondo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-07-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 06:56:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4294983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kmo/pseuds/kmo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bedelia tires of being Hannibal's surrogate sister and is reborn as his wife. </p><p>Or, what happened after the bath scene in Secondo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nascita di Venere

It’s his obsession with her hair that first betrays him.

Bedelia cannot pinpoint when it started, but Hannibal has fallen into the habit of watching her in those moments before bed as she takes off her jewelry and brushes out her hair. At first he reclines in an armchair with a prop of some kind—a glass of brandy, a newspaper—stealing surreptitious glances they both pretend she doesn’t notice. But as they go on, and she does not protest, the props no longer become necessary. He perches at the edge of the bed and watches her with undisguised fascination, eyes liquid dark and soft as she plucks pins and loosens golden curls. Silk ribbons and silver combs appear unasked for on her vanity table, and Bedelia takes pleasure in decorating herself with the latter and using the former to bind her locks together nightly. She spends hours in the morning with hot rollers and irons until her hair is curled to perfection, defying gravity like some Hitchcockian femme fatale. It’s positively Victorian and she would tease him for it were it not for the way she finds herself growing wet under his obsessive gaze.

She lets him observe, though she knows Hannibal aches to participate.

Knowing now what she knows, she can trace the origins of his obsession all the way back to their very first meeting. To the moment where, when presented with a choice of two identical chairs, Hannibal picked the one opposite the room’s overlarge windows. She thinks about how even during the dark of the year, he timed his appointments so that she would always be bathed in golden afternoon light, the southern exposure burnishing her hair like a halo.

Bedelia flicks through the file she keeps on him in the library of her mind (its physical counterpart did not accompany them to Europe, destroyed by Hannibal lest the FBI discover it) and knows that no blonde numbers among the socialites, dowagers, and forensic psychologists Hannibal has taken to his bed over the years.

Hannibal’s patterns, his tastes, always betray him.

It becomes obvious the more time they spend in each other’s company, acting out a half-truth of a marriage that is a marriage in every way save one and more faithful than most. He makes no move to touch her when they are at home together. When they must act out their charade to an audience, he goes no further than a hand on her back or shoulder, fingertips trailing gently through her curls. Even their flat’s solitary bedroom with its single king-sized bed allows them a cocoon of personal space the other would never dream of violating. On those nights when Hannibal deigns to sleep at all, they lie chastely beside each other, like brother and sister.

Like brother and sister. She flags the thought, underlines, and italicizes it.

*****

After the Albizzis have departed and the remains of the feast made from the ill-fated Professor Sogliato have been cleared away, Hannibal comes upon her as she runs her fingers under the tap of her copper bath.

“I have a gift for you,” he says.

“Oh?” Bedelia takes in the neatly wrapped emerald and gold box, embossed with the seal of the Santa Maria della Novella apothecary. “What’s the occasion?”

“No occasion.” Hannibal smiles carefully, one of his impish schoolboy smiles. “Open it,” he urges.

Bedelia plucks at the gold ribbon and slides aside the heavy paper. The box is filled with specially blended lotions and creams, bath beads and bubbles that smell of heady jasmine and rich myrrh. Shampoo and conditioner brewed with spring water and scented with rosemary are tucked away in the corner.

 _Rosemary—that’s for_   _remembrance_ , a voice speaks from the depths.

“How kind of you. I am sure I will enjoy them,” she says, taking out the pretty glass bottles and enamel jars and lining them up one by one next to the bath. Hannibal nods his head and turns to leave.

Something flashes, a live wire that runs straight from her hindbrain to her pelvis.

“Perhaps you’d like to enjoy them with me,” she offers.

Hannibal visibly trembles at her invitation.

*****

He rolls up his sleeves, fills the bathtub with steaming water and fragrant bubbles. She dips a hand beneath the surface.

“Is the temperature satisfactory?” he asks.

“Just right,” she says, peeling off the chocolate silk of her dress and draping it across the counter. Hannibal, she notices, averts his direct gaze as she undresses, preferring to look upon her reflection abstracted through the room’s many mirrors.

She lowers herself into the tub, unable to repress a hiss of pleasure as the hot water caresses her skin. The sensation is soon followed by a twinge of horror at the image of herself cooking in a large copper pot. Her heart races, and she forces herself to relax, hoping Hannibal will credit the flush in her cheeks to the heat of the bath.

Hannibal observes her at a distance from the upholstered bench in the corner. They chat idly about the museum, the Albizzis and their patronage, as Bedelia lathers up a sponge and runs it over legs and arms, shoulders and neck, at last dipping beneath the surface to wash her breasts and torso. She bites her lip as its rough edges scrape against her swollen labia for the briefest of seconds. Until it’s only her hair left dry and unwashed.

“Would you like to help me?” she asks, heart beating hummingbird fast within her chest, excited, terrified, aroused.

One could hear a pin drop as she waits for Hannibal’s answer. He nods, slowly and seriously, and kneels behind her. Large hands caress her dry hair, unable to resist touching it, combing through the strands, caressing her curls without tangling them. He cups his hands in the water, dampening the gold strands until they are dark and wet. A bottle is unstoppered and smell of rosemary and lavender fills the air—fresh, herbal, pure as a mountain breeze. Hannibal’s hands work the shampoo into a lather, covering every strand from root to tip, taking the time to massage her scalp with the pads of his thumb and forefinger. Her nipples harden in a way that has nothing to do with cold and she feels a wetness between her thighs that has nothing to do with water. He’s very sensual, very gentle, but Bedelia is all too aware of the power of that grasp—he could have the bones of her skull shattering like Baccarat at a moment’s whim.

She is aware, too, of the sense memory she is trying to evoke in him as he runs his hands through soapy locks. Bedelia would wager whatever is left of her professional reputation that Hannibal has only ever done this for one woman before—a girl to be precise—long dead.

She will trade physical vulnerability for emotional vulnerability, actual nudity for psychic nudity. Quid pro quo is something Hannibal understands.

She circles around the subject obliquely, stringing her hard-won pearls of wisdom together to form a delicate lasso. _What were you like as a young man? Would you like to talk about your first spring lamb? Why can’t you go home, Hannibal?_  Hannibal denies her three times with a kind of Biblical symbolism Bedelia finds appropriate for a man who turns every meal into his personal black mass.

Taking her beating, burning heart in her hands, Bedelia delivers her  _coup de grace_ —“How did your sister taste?”

She slips beneath the lukewarm water, but does not sink into its murky depths. She holds her breath until her lungs ache. When Bedelia at last crests the surface, she does so knowing very well that her next breath may be her last.

It isn’t.

Hannibal sits back on his haunches, dark eyes glassy, bleeding heartbreak like a sharkbit seal. A tear drips down his face and lands in the bathwater. “I don’t remember,” he says.

Even now, Hannibal still lies to her and to himself. He remembers, and she doubts any meal—no matter how exquisitely prepared—ever tasted as good as Mischa did.

You never forget your first time.

Bedelia reclines triumphantly against the back of tub, humming softly under her breath, drunk with her momentary victory. She has guessed the demon’s secret name, and now she may bind him to her will—isn’t that the way it is in such stories? She reaches back and takes Hannibal’s left hand in hers, guiding it to her naked breast. “I’m not a substitute for your sister, Hannibal.”

His hand is still for a moment, as if in shock, but soon his fingers begin to toy with her nipple beneath the water. “I don’t want you to be.”

“But you did.”

“Not anymore,” he says, cupping the whole of her breast in his hand.

“Because if I was, we couldn’t do this.” She guides his hand further beneath the water, straight to the junction of her thighs. Wordlessly, he parts her swollen lips, slipping one single long digit inside of her. Slowly, he fucks her with his finger, long teasing strokes, in and out. It’s his ring finger, she realizes, the gold band sliding up against sensitive ridges of skin around her entrance as his palm presses against her clitoris. She moans.

“More,” she pleads, but Hannibal shakes his head, continuing to tease her.

It’s not enough, but she’s wound so tight with arousal and terror, so drunk on her own power, she feels her inner walls start to tremble. Precisely at which moment, Hannibal withdraws his hand, leaving her aching in frustration.

It’s a game they’re playing, it’s always a game.

She rises from the tub, bubbles clinging to her breasts like sea foam, delighting in the way she has been reborn in his eyes.

“Do you want to taste me?” It is a fact, truly, not a question.

“Yes,” he says.

“In what way?” She reaches out a wet hand and brushes back his hair. It’s insane to ask, but a sane woman would never have left Baltimore, would never have taken him as a patient in the first place.

“In every way,” he sighs, open and transparent. He lets her see him, man and monster, and for once there is no danger in it.

“I thought as much.” Bedelia plants one foot on the edge of the tub, exposing herself to him. It is the only invitation he needs. Hungry lips press to the soft flesh of her thighs, licking up droplets of perfumed water. His aquiline nose nuzzles her short curls and inhales, searching out her natural scent. He grips her ass, drawing her to him, and she steadies her hands on his shoulders as he begins to lick at her folds, his mouth driven as much by his desire to pleasure her as his instinct to devour her. A firm tongue slips inside her, thicker than a finger, but softer than a cock, and Bedelia cries out. His teeth tease her swollen clitoris and she finds herself fluttering close to the edge again, shaking, gasping—and he stops.

She closes her eyes and bites back the urge to beg for her own release—Bedelia knows the rules of this unspoken game and she has no desire to lose the first round. When she opens her eyes, Hannibal is starring at her. She holds his gaze confidently, enjoying the way her juices look when spread about his lips. When she does not reprove or plead, he offers her his hand, and gently guides her out of the bath.

Hannibal wraps her first in a fluffy sage-colored towel, then in his arms. She feels his erection press against her through the layers of merino wool and Egyptian cotton and smiles sweetly to herself. She unwinds the towel and uses it to dry her hair as he watches.

His eyes noticeably dim as he sees her naked body. “You’re too thin.”

Bedelia gives a hoarse, hollow laugh. She’s subsisted on little but oysters, wine, and the occasional clandestine gelato since they arrived in Florence. “Whose fault is that?”

His fingers splay themselves around her ribcage and she knows he can count every bone. “Mostly mine,” he concedes, almost apologetic. He takes the towel from her, giving her wet hair one last tousle before casting it aside to gather her close. Her body is still strung tight, throbbing from a release denied. He presses her still damp form against him, uncaring about his own immaculately tailored shirt, and draws her to him for a long, languorous kiss. Bedelia grips his shirt, welcoming him in, and at the moment his tongue brushes her own, he sweeps her into his arms effortlessly, carrying her naked body over the threshold of their bedroom, a bridegroom to his bride.

It is clear he no longer thinks of her as his sister.

He spreads her out on the satin sheets like a banquet and Bedelia reclines, languid and leisurely, interested to see where he will take this, amused that he seems to have such clear intentions of how their first time together should proceed.

It’s her turn to observe as he undresses for her, hastily she thinks, though still taking the time to toss his shirt and trousers in the laundry hamper—Hannibal has no shortage of faults, but he’s not the type to require nagging about picking up his dirty socks. She’s felt hints of his physique before, the muscles of his shoulders under her hands as they danced, the weight of his arm around hers as they promenaded from piazza to piazza on a brisk fall afternoon. She’d glimpsed it once, too—it had been impressive then, but is even more so now, full erect cock bobbing at attention.

They can counterfeit so many things toward each other, but a hard dick is a hard dick in Bedelia’s experience, something not even Hannibal could feign. It’s a relief to know on some level he is no different than other men.

With a smile that tells her he knows she has been inspecting him, Hannibal joins her on the bed and presses his naked body close to hers until she feels the warm silk of skin upon skin. He takes her hands and places them upon his chest, inviting her to explore him, an invitation she accepts. He is quite wonderfully made, very different from the anemic academics and paunchy executives who had offered themselves to her in the past.

His fingers trail up the nape of her neck in a way that makes her shiver. He’s cross-wired pleasure and danger in her brain—she cannot seem to feel one without the other anymore. “You have seen me, Bedelia. Do you wish to know me?”

“Yes,” she says, pulse throbbing, bleeding life, in her neck, her breast, between her legs.

He pulls her closer, close enough that her wet cunt grazes his bare thigh. “This is not how a psychiatrist knows her patient.” He shifts against her and she swallows a moan. “This is how a wife knows her husband.”

“In every way, Hannibal,” she says, breathless. She wants to see him come apart in her arms—she wants to see herself reflected in his eyes doing the same.

He shifts his weight till he is poised above her. His eyes lock on hers, still looking, still waiting, still giving her one last chance to say no before they cross this bridge and burn it down behind them. He thrusts into her, and Bedelia can’t help but cry out, unable to distinguish between pleasure and pain.

He draws back slowly, teasing, before crashing into her again. And again. And again. Each thrust hitting her G-spot mercilessly until she’s gripping his back, digging in her nails, and coming with his name on her lips.

He’s delighted watching her orgasm, the closest thing she’s ever seen to a genuine smile lights up his face. But he’s not finished yet, he’s still hard and thick inside of her, blessed with superhuman stamina. He gathers her up until she is straddling his lap and thrusts deeply as she rides him. He nuzzles her breasts as his large thumb presses against her clitoris, lightly at first, then harder, faster, sending her cascading over the falls again, him following hot and slick behind her.

They hold each other close in the afterglow—for a brief moment as tender and as rose-tinted as any other pair of lovers in the world. He caresses her face, and she feels the last remnants of his person-suit unravel in her hands. He’s like a virgin, she thinks, never having done this before with someone who actually could see him. Not for the first time, his loneliness wounds her, reaching out to pluck at her own.

“Alana Bloom found my human veil so beguiling, she dared not look beneath it. Will Graham was not interested in me as a person. As a friend. He only ever wanted the Chesapeake Ripper, so I showed him the Ripper.” Hannibal places a fingertip under her chin and tilts her head upwards. “Who are you interested in, Bedelia? Are you here for the monster or for the man?”

“I make no such distinction.”

And it’s not a lie. Not really. Not today.

**Author's Note:**

> Title refers to _The Birth of Venus_ , Botticelli's other masterpiece that hangs in the Uffizi.
> 
> I had the pleasure of visiting the Santa Maria della Novella apothecary last summer, which features in the movie _Hannibal_. It's considered to be the oldest apothecary in the world and yes, Hannibal would love that place.
> 
> Come find me on tumblr as bedannibal-lectaurier where I post too many pictures of Gillian Anderson


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